Auto Suggestions are available once you type at least 3 letters. Use up arrow (for mozilla firefox browser alt+up arrow) and down arrow (for mozilla firefox browser alt+down arrow) to review and enter to select.

Overview

They find her body in the veld near Cape Town, South Africa. A teenager. She's not the first. Recently widowed Detective Jan Magson has to look mothers and fathers in the eye. Has to answer their questions. He can't. He can't even answer his estranged son's questions about how his wife died. Alone with his pistol at night, a good man faces his inner darkness.

A tense and grisly debut novel of suspense from South Africa.Kirkus, starred review

After obtaining degrees in Psychology and Criminology, Martin Steyn studied serial killers and profiling. Dark Traces is his first novel in English.

Product Details

About the Author

Martin Steyn began writing Stephen King-inspired horror stories in his teens. Given his interest in the darker recesses of human beings, it was probably unavoidable that he would become fascinated by serial killers. After obtaining degrees in Psychology and Criminology, he studied serial killers and profiling. He also wrote seven true crime articles for the Crime Library website.

But the dream was always to write fiction, particularly realistic crime fiction. This led to much research into the South African Police Service and its forensic units. In 2014 Donker Spoor was published by LAPA Uitgewers, and was awarded the ATKV-Woordveertjie for Suspense Fiction the following year. In 2017 it will be published in English as Dark Traces. Steyn is the translator for Dark Traces.

Steyn prefers to tell the story through the eyes of the detective, that individual with the extraordinary task of finding justice for those whose final chapter ends up being written in a murder docket.

Editorial Reviews

A tense and grisly debut novel of suspense from South Africa.

“Yet another Sunday lunch with the family interrupted by blood and maggots” sets the tone perfectly for this thriller set in Bishop Lavis, a town in western South Africa. A bird-watcher finds a decomposing body, and the medical examiner says it's a teenage girl who has been hanged. Murder by hanging is a new crime for Warrant Officers Jan “Mags” Magson and Colin Menck, partners in the Serious Violent Crimes Unit on the Western Cape. They’re two smart cops with distinctly different outlooks on life. Magson: “Sometimes I think weapons and greed are the only reasons we’re at the top of the food chain.” Menck: “Some days you’re the pigeon and some days you’re the statue.” Magson’s near-suicidal sorrow at the recent death of his wife, Emma, further darkens the plot of a mysterious spree targeting teenage girls. Cops speculate that the victims are lured or forced into a car before being violently raped, then hanged or strangled and dumped into a field. Mags and Menck interrogate a suspect who’d exposed himself to a schoolgirl a few years earlier, and they think they may have their man when another suspect claims, “I didn’t murder anyone! It was just sex!” The tension stays high and the narrative and dialogue stay interestingthank goodness for the upfront glossary that explains such words as klagtebakkie (the vehicles used by uniformed police officers) and oom (uncle, or a term used to respectfully address an older male). Luckily, Menck occasionally lifts the story’s pervading tone. In one interrogation, he warns the suspect of Magson’s foul mood: “You see, my partner here chooses not to use the number one toothpaste as recommended by dentists,” and the resulting sore tooth makes him irritable and impatient.

A dark, intriguing, and satisfying tale with strong characters.

 Kirkus (Starred Review)

From the Publisher

08/01/2017South African Police Warrant Officer Jan Magson works in Cape Town's Violent Crimes Unit. Still grieving the loss of his wife, he is called to a crime scene just out of town. The pathologist, having discovered that the victim had been hanged before being dumped, remembers a similar recent case. When another body is found, and another girl disappears, Jan and his team find themselves on the hunt for a sadistic serial killer. At the same time, an attempted rapprochement with his estranged son in England does not go well when he refuses to answer his son's questions on how his mother died. Fighting to hold it together so he can stay on the case, Jan races to find the killer before the body count gets higher. VERDICT A damaged but determined detective is matched against a bold and intelligent killer in this captivating debut thriller. Steyn's Cape Town will be familiar to any city dweller who no longer knows their neighbors and hides behind barred windows. [Catalyst is a new press devoted to African literature.—Ed.]—Dan Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green

First time in eBook. Cindy McCall wanted only one thing--to be loved for herself rather
than for Big Eddy McCall's fortune. Trace Rawlings never knew his father or his mother, but he had made a home for himself in the ...

Death is lurking amongst the equivocal high society of a rich Venetian town, where life
is suddenly disturbed by the actions of a merciless assassin who uses strange rituals in killing his victims leaving no trace. An ordinary employee, a ...

Welcome to Willow Creek, Maine, the perfect small coastal town to raise a family. It's
safe and quiet and you know and trust your neighbor - at least you used to. Suddenly, kids begin to disappear without a trace, and ...

Figures of the Unconscious, No. 8Sigmund Freud, in his search for the origins of the
sense of guilt in individual life and culture, regularly speaks of reading a dark trace, thus referring to the Oedipus myth as a myth about ...

The relationship between historical studies and psychoanalysis remains an open debate that is full of
tension, in both a positive and a negative sense. In particular, the following question has not been answered satisfactorily: what distinguishes a psychoanalytically oriented study ...

Mara has disappeared without a trace, and none of the family can bring her back.
Fin is forced to rebuild her life and move on, leaving Mara behind. But, sometimes, people are much closer than we realize. Find out what ...

Divine Divorce: How to Make a Great Adventure Out of the Worst Disaster of Your
LifeCome on a journey to turn what may be the biggest challenge of your life-getting over a break up-into a great adventure that will give ...